Sweeter Than Sugar Valentine’s Tour With Sugartooth

by Emily

Last Saturday, Adam and I were invited on a sweet dessert tasting tour of in the city.

Sugartooth Tours, formed by best friends who bonded over a love of theatre and ice cream, offers several NYC-based dessert tours. Right now all of the tours take place in Manhattan, but Allyson gave me the inside scoop that they are testing out a Brooklyn tour to be debuted this summer. Some of the tours include a Village Cupcake Crawl, an Ice Cream Summer Sundays Frozen Treats Tour, several mixed treats tours around Hell’s Kitchen, Broadway, and Chelsea/the West Village, and the option of personalized itineraries for small group celebrations.

The tours range in size from 3 – 16 people and are guided by one of the knowledgeable and friendly co-founders. You walk from nosh to nosh – usually 6 stops in total and no more than 2 miles – learning about the history of the neighborhood on your way. It takes about 2 and half hours from start to finish. Tickets are $50 per person and include all tastings. You also have a bit of time at the stops to purchase additional items to take home if you are so inclined, but there is definitely no pressure to buy anything.

The Chelsea/West Village option, the Sweeter Than Sugar Dessert Tour, is available year-round at 4pm on Sundays. For a limited time, they have updated it with a Valentine’s theme for the upcoming Festival of Love and Candy. The updated tour includes Valentine’s history trivia – most of it more gory than gushy – and is taken in pairs so you can experience the fun with your sweetheart (or your mom, no judgment!). This is the tour we were invited to take.

Special hours for the Sweeter Than Sugar Valentine’s Tour are February 13th, 14th, & 15th at 5:30 PM and February 14th & 15th at 2PM. If you’re interested, you can sign up on the website here.

General thoughts on the tour:

Adam and I both had a wonderful time (the 2.5 hours flew by) and agree that we would like to check out Sugartooth Tours again on our own this summer.
The tours run rain or shine, so be sure to dress accordingly. We got lucky with a “warm” 40 degree night, but you kept moving when you were outside so there wasn’t much time to get cold.
Bring water! Sugar makes me quite thirsty.
We ended up taking home lots of leftovers, so save yourself some extra room in your bag.

The stops:

{1} We started at City Cakes, who are known for their gorgeous cake decorating but have also branched out into giant 1/2 pound cookies that are baked 3 times and reshaped in between trips to the oven.

Some of the flavors included chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, ginger spice, triple chocolate with clove, and peanut butter with Reeses Pieces. Adam I got red velvet stuffed with cream cheese frosting.

Crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside, this was delicious. Note – you got the entire cookie, they just cut it in halves so you can eat while you walk.

{2} Next we headed into Chelsea Market to Amy’s Bread for hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows.

Their hot chocolate is pure ganache mixed with steamed milk. It wasn’t as gloriously thick as the stuff from Max Brenner, but it was flavorful and not too sweet. The marshmallows were the best we’ve ever had. Adam usually turns up his nose at marshmallows on cocoa but even he loved it.

Note – we were encouraged to fill up the (full-sized) cup, and even refill for the road, but I was trying to pace myself.

{3} Then we trekked on the High Line – gorgeous at night – to Sugar Factory, a Vegas import famous for their rhinestone-bedazzled lollipop sticks, of course.

They also had giant walls of candy and we were given small take-out boxes and told to go crazy.

They had a good variety, including cola bottles, chocolate-covered gummy bears, and several themed options for Valentine’s.

{4} Heading into West Village, we stopped at Chocolate Bar where we were taught the proper way to taste a truffle. CB was a cute spot, boasting many nicely wrapped, fun flavors.

Adam was enticed into buying (and eating) a full-sized candy bar!

They had a good variety of truffles, and I choose grapefruit and cajeta.

Cajeta = condensed milk caramel = Mexican dulce de leche = swoon.

{5} Allyson noted that you pretty much have to include macarons, and they felt that Sugar & Plumm has the best in Manhattan.

They have some inventive flavors – strawberry poppyseed, violet blackcurrant, chocolate-covered banana! – and are made in New Jersey so they don’t suffer from a long shipping time from France.

I very much enjoyed the salted caramel and Adam, who “hates” macarons, went back for seconds of the pistachio!

{6} Finally, we ended at Sweet Revenge for chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes. They are known for their cupcake and wine or beer pairings so we had the option of paying extra for the recommended Malbec or Hefeweizen, but everyone on our tour opted to take their cupcake to go.

So, six; apparently six desserts is overkill 😉

Please note – Sugartooth Tours brought Adam and I on the tour free of charge so we could see what it was all about. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

9Feb2015

Weekend Wrap-Up

by Emily

random facts

I finished reading my latest book on Friday – Fairyland, a memoir about growing up with an openly gay father in San Francisco in the 80’s. (Not much of a)spoiler alert – he dies of AIDS related complications. I was wracked with sobs for the last quarter of the book. Steve Abbot was a published author who kept detailed journals his entire adulthood and wrote copious letters to Alysia while she was in college, so she had a lot of source material to pull from which was nice; it was practically a biography within a memoir.
A big chunk of Saturday is missing because we went on a fun foodie tour and I am devoting a whole post to it. (coming tomorrow)
We upgraded our phones on Sunday. My new Galaxy is giant and tacky, obnoxiously gold.

breakfast

Adam and I tried the new raspberry white chocolate coffee from Dunkin’.

Our opinions ranged from good to meh. I still want to try the Starbucks version.

Cereal bowl.

Cocoa Pebbles and Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes. Pebbles have absolutely no flavor and were deeply disappointing.

Oatmeal bowl.

Rolled oats – cooked in the microwave – with 1 heaping Tbsp each chopped pecans, raisins, chocolate chips, and brown sugar. Plus milk on top.

Coffee from 7-11 with wasabi almonds.

Yes, that was a terrible combination.

lunch

Chipotle!

White rice / chicken / black beans / sautéed veggies / fresh salsa / tomatillo salsa / sour cream / cheese. I would normally get lettuce but I split this bowl with Adam and he didn’t want it. I’ve stopped putting the corn salsa on my bowls in general because even though it’s tasty it isn’t really necessary to pile another carb on top of a rice bowl.

Adam went to a post-ABSITE surgical exam party and brought home leftover mini pizzas.

Paired with green juice.

NYC Jamba Juices recently introduced a new line of 12 oz Cold-Pressed Juice bottles and they sent me a $10 gift card so I could try them out.

I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

The juices contain no preservatives and three servings of fruit and/or vegetables and each full bottle has between 140 to 190 calories.

Citrus Kick was way too spicy for me – Adam liked it but I just can’t do ginger – but I found Tropical Greens to be nicely balanced, neither two sweet nor too grassy. (There are four flavors in total; the two I didn’t try were Orange Reviver and Veggie Harvest).

dinner

We had another stupendous meal at Russ & Daughters.

The Breakfast Martini = Beefeater gin, jam, lemon juice, egg white, Pernod Absinthe, Angostura Bitters.

I adore cocktails with egg white. <– I was about to type that they will be hard for me to give up if I get pregnant! I guess the alcohol may also be an issue.

I ordered the Eggs Benny, which came with Scottish smoked salmon and sautéed spinach on challah.

No surprise, the eggs were perfectly poached and the hollandaise was loaded with flavor. <– more reasons I’m not chomping at the bit for a baby

Sunday night we made a nice, but less exciting dinner at home.

We were helped out by a jar of Sepo Sauce, a creamy garlic and horseradish spread that’s meant to be used as a dressing, dip, and/or sandwich spread.

Sepfonifiq sent me a jar of sauce free of charge to review. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

The sauce has 150 calories and 2.5 grams saturated fat per 2-Tbsp serving, so it’s not any healthier than most typical dressings, but it packs a lot of flavor so you would rarely need to use any more than a serving.

We decided to go the bread and lettuce route.

A sandwich of part-skim mozzarella cheese, thick-cut uncured turkey ham steak, and whole-wheat cinnamon swirl bread spread with Sepo Sauce and oven-toasted.

A salad of baby kale tossed in Sepo Sauce and topped with roasted broccoli and sweet and spicy pecans.

Plus we split a sumo mandarin on the side.

Sadly, we hated the thick cut turkey, which kind of ruined the sandwiches. We both got rid of the meat halfway through and ended up eating big desserts instead. But we loooved the Sepo as a dressing and were both blown away by the salad. I will definitely look forward to making that again.

Please cross your fingers that it’s not actually snowing in NYC right now?

7Feb2015

Last Week’s Top Five

by Emily

{1} Coffee, always.

The Hint of Honey Almond Breeze is coffee’s perfect companion. (note – I prefer the original to vanilla)

{2} Dates with turkey bacon.

I agree, everything on that napkin looks like a cockroach (dates one major downfall!), but the combination was delicious.

{3} Good lunches from the cafeteria.

A winning tuna salad sandwich and a giant burrito with chicken, cheese, sour cream, salsa, and tons of broccoli that they sweetly let me add from the salad bar.

{4} Berry yogurt bowl.

Fresh blues / Stonyfield Strawberry Oh My Yog! / Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes. I did not enjoy the sour, whole milk taste of the yogurt, but several coworkers tasted the cereal after I raved about it and wrote down the specs so they could buy some too!

{5} A meze plate.

All from Trader Joe’s – dates / green and orange bell peppers / baby carrots / dolmas / olives / kalamata olive hummus.

2Feb2015

Weekend Wrap-Up; My Camera Went MIA

by Emily

Moving to Long Island has done something to my brain! <– real talk, please let’s just pretend that this problem is a LI thing and not the fact that I turn 30 this year

Prior to 2013, I had lost/seriously misplaced one item in my entire life: a pair of flip-flops at a party in high school. Also I had to have my dorm keys replaced in college after Adam kicked them into a lake, but those weren’t technically missing, they just weren’t accessible. But lately? I’m an absentminded disaster. Last year, on my very first day at the hospital, I lost a brand-new scarf. This December, I lost a brand-newish i-pod somewhere between my apartment and the gym. And this weekend I misplaced my camera. Not lost, thankfully, because it turned out that I had just left it in the husband’s car, but since he then drove that car to 30 hour shift this is my long-winded way of telling you that I don’t have a ton of pictures from this weekend. I am missing a lot, especially since I didn’t deem things like the four slices of cinnamon toast I ate for dinner on Saturday instagram-worthy.

How often do you lose track of your stuff? Someone tell me they left their baby on the bus so I’ll feel better!

breakfasts and lunches

Coffee! This was a freebie so I went a bit crazy – a large iced latte with extra espresso.

Those Starbucks workers get very snarky once you start asking for that much espresso.

Yet another good reason to have coffee at home instead.

Starbucks iced (but from home!) with Hint of Honey Almond Breeze and fat-free half and half.

Fruit and yogurt bowls ruled my work lunches. Grape Chobani with pomegranate and a Zing Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip bar on the side.

Stonyfield Chia and Red Berry Greek Yogurt with fresh strawberries and the last of the TJ’s Pumpkin O’s.

Several coworkers commented on this lunch; I guess they aren’t used to chia?!

The best was clearly brunch at Rabbit Hole with a girl friend. I got the Eggs Norwegian, aka a Benedict but with lox instead of bacon and served on a biscuit.

Sooo good. But the drink in the background was even better – Champagne, St. Germaine, and grapefruit. We both got one and thought that they were just great.

snacks

We tried some fun drinks while we were in Chinatown.

Yeeech! The sugar cane was terrible. But we only spent $1 so it was worth a shot.

Adam bought Gushers!!

They weren’t as good as I remembered, but it was still a fun throwback.

Coffee is always good.

The Blue Bottle in Williamsburg made me my New Orleans with skim milk. Frankly, I would have accepted almost anything at that point though – first my friend and I stopped at one coffee shop that was out of ice and another that poured me a giant glass of whole milk with a smidge of coffee in it.

dinner

I made us great pasta bowls one night. Box mac and cheese gussied up with canned smoked trout, chopped spinach, sautéed bell peppers and garlic, and tons of caramelized onions.

I doused my bowl in green Tabasco.

Adam and I finally got to try Pies and Thighs for dinner.

I got the Chicken Biscuit.

Fried cutlet with honey butter and hot sauce on a biscuit.

Plus a really amazing salad.

Collard greens with avocado, pickled red onions, and smoked coconut. Adam and I could not get over how delicious it was; I really want to remake it at home.

With banana cream pie on Nilla Wafer crust for dessert.

Yum. ♥

29Jan2015

Random Thoughts

by Emily

{with some random rants and a few photos from my phone}

I haaaaate when people leave their shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot. Way to waste parking spaces because you’re too lazy to function. Especially because most people only are buying a bag or two; why the heck do you even need to wheel that to your car?! Use your arms so I don’t have to hate you!

I also hate the fact that this is my only post for the week because I’ve been in the mother of all bad moods and I was too cranky to do a wrap-up.

Part of why I’m cranky is the fact that I had to waste a vacation day on Tuesday because our clinic was closed for the “blizzard.” But I do love that I got to spend that day like this –

And I’m glad that I took the dog on an extra long walk on Monday because while it may not have been the predicted snowpocalypse, the weather was bad enough that we didn’t leave the house at all on Tuesday.

Here is how Adam and I prepared for the inclement weather, by the way –

That Lindt Hello popcorn bar was terrible. Adam liked it, but the flavor was way too true to life: I don’t want to taste popcorn when the texture in my mouth is creamy not crunchy.

These Dang coconut chips were perfectly crunchy, and tasty.

We started watching “Backstrom” this week and I’m not sure I’m going to like it even though I love Hart Hanson (creator of “Bones.”). I’m going to give it three episodes, but I didn’t like “The Finder” at all either.

But Brooklyn-99 has been rocking my face off, per usual.

That’s all 🙂

27Jan2015

Fudgy Triple Chocolate Marshmallow Brownies {aka The Best Brownies Ever}

by Emily

I’ve always thought that I kind of hated brownies, but recently I realized that what I hate is cakey brownies. Not much of a surprise, considering that I hate chocolate cake. Fudgy, chewy, hefty brownies? It turns out that I love those. And it doesn’t hurt if you add a layer of marshmallow.

Inspired by the Baker’s Chocolate recipe, these guys only require you to dirty one bowl. Between the baking chocolate, cocoa powder, and milk chocolate chips, these brownies are intensely chocolatey. Even better, they are quite fudgy. If you like cakey brownies, then this is definitely not the recipe for you.

Fudgy Triple Chocolate Marshmallow Brownies, yields 16 servings

6 Tbsp salted butter
2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg and egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup Dutch process cocoa powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1.25 cups milk chocolate chips
1.5 cups marshmallow fluff

Line an 8×8 inch baking pan with aluminum foil and spray foil with baking spray. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place butter and baking chocolate in a large, microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals, stirring regularly until the butter and chocolate are completely melted.
Stir sugars into melted chocolate. Whisk in egg and vanilla. Stir in flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Fold chocolate chips into batter.
Divide batter in two and spread the first half evenly into the prepared baking pan. Use a spatula to top evenly with a layer of fluff, followed by an even layer of the remaining batter.
Bake for 30 – 33 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out with fudgy crumbs. The marshmallow layer will bubble up into the top layer of batter in several spots, that’s ok – it gives the brownies a rustic look.
Remove foil from pan and allow brownies to cool complete before slicing into 16 squares. Store leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge.

I still hate boxed brownies though. Always and forever.

26Jan2015

Weekend Wrap-Up; Marshmallow Madness

by Emily

I am not 100% yet, but I am feeling much better. 90%? Poor Adam, though, has gotten my cold x2, complete with an ear infection. It’s put a real damper on how much sympathy I’m able to get! At least we were both in the mood for a quiet, lazy weekend.

breakfast and lunch

Friday at work I had a Coconut Chocolate Chip Clif Bar with WF’s Citrus Blend Italian Sparkling Mineral Water.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing tops Diet Coke, but I am really loving those sparkling waters. The strawberry flavor is the best.

Then for lunch, Grape Chobani with KIND Raspberry Chia Seed Clusters, an apple, and a Vita Coco Café.

Again, not as amazing as iced coffee, but the espresso coconut water mash-up is damn good.

And I did have iced coffee this weekend. With skim milk and vanilla creamer.

Plus peanut/butter toast and a mini cheese for brunch.

That is the only weekend breakfast or lunch picture I have because mostly we snacked on random things.

Also I made and ate a lot of brownies (see below…).

dinner

Friday night we turned to the freezer for dinner.

TJ’s vegan orange chicken was alright paired with broccoli.

But it was basically the least filling thing on the planet. We both ended up making sandwiches too.

Fancy pb&j for me.

Saturday night was just straight fancy.

I made baked shrimp! Shrimp, chopped bell pepper, evoo, fresh cilantro, salt, smoked paprika, cayenne, lime juice, and a sprinkle of chopped butter, baked at 425* for 12 minutes. Served on top of jasmine rice cooked in chicken stock.

This was tasty, healthy, and oh-so quick to prepare. Triple win.

Sunday I started dinner in the car home after the world’s longest trip to Trader Joe’s. Apparently people are freaking out about our potential blizzard. By the by, please, please, please cross your fingers that it doesn’t blizzard!

After my pretzel roll I made a spinach salad.

With balsamic vinaigrette, pomegranate, goat’s milk cheddar, and sweet and salty pecans.

snacks, aka marshmallow madness

My mother-in-law sent us a cute Valentine’s card and some strawberry Peeps.

They were yummy, but the marshmallow extravaganza was just beginning… we also had a big container of fluff!

So I made the very best brownies I’ve ever tasted.

Triple chocolate fudge with a layer of marshmallow fluff in the middle.

Recipe is coming tomorrow and it is absolutely fantastic, I promise.

In the meantime, I did something else with the fluff.

Oh yes, I did. Malted Marshmallow Coffee Creamer. If you put skim milk, marshmallow fluff (1:2 ratio with the milk), and malted milk powder (1:4 ratio with the milk) in the blender you can put it in your coffee and pretty much die of happiness.

We used 2 cups skim milk, 1 cup fluff, and 1/4 cup malted milk powder, but as long as you follow the ratio above you can make a smaller or larger batch, no problem. I highly recommend it!

23Jan2015

Weekly Wrap-Up; On The Mend

by Emily

I am still a teensy bit sick, but thankfully I am feeling much, much better than last weekend. Hopefully by the end of this weekend I’ll be back to 100%!

breakfast

My first day back, when I came in feeling just terrible, my coworker surprised me with a bagel with lox and cream cheese.

So sweet of her, and very serendipitous since I hadn’t managed to get coffee, let alone breakfast.

Adam drove me into work on Wednesday since he had errands to do in Brooklyn, so we went in early and made a date of it.

Doughnut Plant!

I got a coconut cream filled and a Valrhona hot chocolate. Plus we stopped for an iced coffee along the walk.

This was so much fun, I cannot even tell you; morning date for the win.

Yesterday I randomly woke up feeling sooo hungry so I pieced together a big breakfast in the cafeteria.

Coffee with chocolate milk,

and scrambled eggs, veggie sausage, and a croissant.

lunch

Veggie pizza from the cafeteria.

This was good, but it had corn on it which I found to be an incredibly strange topping choice. Not that I don’t love corn, but on a pizza??!

Wednesday I brought an apple and a Jarlsberg Cheese Mini (more on that in a minute…) from home.

Plus a salad from the cafeteria that I apparently don’t have a picture of.

Yesterday was another apple, plus an Apricot Ancient Grains Chobani with TJ’s Pumpkin O’s and KIND Banana Nut Clusters.

I liked the Chobani much more than the one with oats I tried previously. The pieces of apricot were quite nice.

snack

I don’t usually drink coffee after 4 pm but I ended up getting iced decafs twice this week because I was so obsessed with the idea of coffee flavor in the evening.

With skim milk and a splash of cream.

Another night we had smoothies for our creamy drink fix.

Chocolate peppermint soymilk with frozen strawberries and plain Greek yogurt.

Back to that cheese…

Jarlsberg recently started making minis and they sent me some to try.

For full disclosure I will tell you that Adam didn’t like the flavor (“too mild”) but I did, and I thought the texture was great (firm bite – you could squeeze it between your fingers and the wheel held its shape – but very creamy). 70 calories per mini wheel, for a nicely portable snack.

Caramel apple plate,

Caramel pecan popcorn and apple slices sprinkled with caramel cinnamon sugar.

I brought that adorable shaker back from San Francisco’s Japantown.

Related note – this salted caramel hand sanitizer smells beyond amazing.

Another souvenir from our SF trip, Ruby Grand dried nectarines from Frog Hollow.

Served on with vanilla shortbreads for a very fancy, only slightly Georgia O’Keefe-y snack plate.

dinner

An easy dinner for the first night I cooked after take-out for every meal all weekend.

Salad with honey mustard dressing, parmesan, dried blueberries, and sweet and salty pecans.

Eggs with sautéed onion and TJ’s canned mackerel scrambled in. Plus turkey bacon.

I cooked the bacon first so everything in my eggs was infused with that flavor.

Date night at Pequeña in Brooklyn.

We started with an order of the fried sweet plantains.

Pretty good, but I think I would have to go back home to really get my plantain craving satisfied.

I ordered veggie quesadillas for my entrée – Pan Fried Tortillas Stuffed with Oaxacan String Cheese And Zucchini, Peppers, Mushroom, Onion, and Squash. Topped with Salsa Roja, Queso Fresco and Cilantro.

I always cook my quesadillas in a pan, but apparently “pan fried” here meant legit deep fried quesadillas. They were tasty but also a bit ridiculous; I ate one plus the filling out of the other.

I’m writing this post before dinner on Thursday, but it’s gotten pretty late and I’m leaning towards a big salad and an old-school pb&j. 🙂

Eating Chalk

Author Archives: Emily

Sweeter Than Sugar Valentine’s Tour With Sugartooth

Please note – Sugartooth Tours brought Adam and I on the tour free of charge so we could see what it was all about. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

Weekend Wrap-Up

I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

Sepfonifiq sent me a jar of sauce free of charge to review. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

Last Week’s Top Five

Weekend Wrap-Up; My Camera Went MIA

breakfasts and lunches

snacks

dinner

Random Thoughts

Fudgy Triple Chocolate Marshmallow Brownies {aka The Best Brownies Ever}

Weekend Wrap-Up; Marshmallow Madness

breakfast and lunch

dinner

snacks, aka marshmallow madness

Weekly Wrap-Up; On The Mend

breakfast

lunch

snack

dinner